Inspired by the Seattle Times headline, “Former FEMA director points finger, gets hand slapped,” I decided to check out editorials around the country on Brownie:
NYT: “The Bush administration’s embarrassment in bungling the Hurricane Katrina disaster was compounded yesterday as Congressional Republicans used a sham hearing to help Michael Brown, who resigned under fire as the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, pass the buck to Democratic officials in Louisiana despite the now-transparent record of federal ineptness … [Brown was] fed a steady stream of softball questions by Republicans. …
The hearing, boycotted by most Democrats, who understandably feared a partisan whitewash, was the firmest evidence yet that a broad and independent inquiry [is needed] …
Questioners didn’t touch on the role played by President Bush, who shocked much of the nation by exuding disconnect in the crucial first days of the disaster. …
I had trouble finding more editorials. Odd, isn’t it. Democracy Now!, of course, is on the job with this lead segment — and telling (!) headline — “Bush’s Brownie Burnt: Former FEMA Head Michael Brown Said He Warned Bush Directly Before Hurricane Struck.” (NOTE: I’m watching this segment now — you’ve GOT to see it. Priceless and disgraceful.)
And there’s this piece in Prensa Latina reminds us of Brown’s disgrace:
After the tragedy, important US media considered Brown among those mainly responsible for the delayed response of the Bush administration to Hurricane Katrina.
The Washington Post caricatured him as the Republican Administration’s “failed head”, faced with one of the worst natural disasters in the country’s history.
The Time-Picayune, Louisiana’s most important daily, wrote an open letter to Bush demanding dismissal of all the emergency agency’s employees, especially Brown.
The New York Times wondered in an editorial entitled “Katrina´s Attack on Washington” how the Homeland Security Department can face up to other crises if it is so badly prepared for a predictable natural disaster.
Adds Slate in its daily summary of the nation’s newspapers:
USA Today leads with, and the Post‘s top national spot goes to, former FEMA Chief (and current FEMA consultant) Mike Brown trying to shank Louisianan officials during Capitol Hill hearings on the Katrina response. The Los Angeles Times leads with Louisiana’s battered economy. A few stats: “some 300,000 people out of work, 70,000 living in shelters, [and] at least 200,000 homes destroyed or heavily damaged.”
At least initially, Brown said he had but one regret on his Katrina response: He wished he had better managed the “dysfunctional” relationship between Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin. Neither official took kindly to that characterization.
Perhaps one of the more significant sections of the hearing yesterday came from Brown’s statement about the “emaciation” of FEMA by Homeland Security, summarized again by Slate:
Eventually, Brown also acknowledged that his agency has been hurting. “I predicted privately for several years that we were going to reach this point [of crisis] because of the lack of resources and the lack of attention being paid to what was [once] a very robust organization,” he said, adding, “at one point, we were short 500 people in an organization of about 2,500.” The papers all flag those comments, but it’s the Post‘s Dana Milbank who gives a sense of the hearing’s arc, pointing out that Brown only began fingering what he dubbed the “emaciation of FEMA” after legislators kept hammering at his incompetence.
Cartoon from The Seattle Times‘s editorial section.
(All emphases mine.)
